Anna Karenina полностью

Not a great snipe but a snipe tore up from under the dog. Levin followed it with his gun, but just as he was taking aim, that same noise of splashing water increased, came nearer, and was joined by the strangely loud voice of Veslovsky shouting something. Levin saw that he was aiming his gun behind the snipe, but he fired anyway.

After making sure he had missed, Levin turned round and saw that the horses and cart were no longer on the road but in the swamp.

Veslovsky, anxious to see the shooting, had driven into the swamp and mired the horses.

‘What the devil got into him!’ Levin said to himself, going back to the mired cart. ‘Why did you drive in here?’ he said drily and, calling the coachman, started freeing the horses.

Levin was vexed because his shooting had been disturbed, and because his horses were stuck in the mud, and above all because neither Stepan Arkadyich nor Veslovsky helped him and the coachman to unharness the horses and get them out, neither of them having the slightest understanding of harnessing. Saying not a word in reply to Vasenka’s assurances that it was quite dry there, Levin silently worked with the coachman to free the horses. But then, getting into the heat of the work, and seeing how diligently and zealously Veslovsky pulled the cart by the splash-board, so that he even broke it off, Levin reproached himself for being too cold towards him under the influence of yesterday’s feeling, and tried to smooth over his dryness by being especially amiable. When everything was put right and the cart was back on the road, Levin ordered lunch to be served.

‘Bon appétit- bonne conscience! Ce poulet va tomber jusquau fond de mes bottes.’^ba Vasenka, merry again, joked in French as he finished a second chicken. ‘So, now our troubles are over; now everything’s going to go well. Only, for my sins I ought to sit on the box. Isn’t that right? Eh? No, no, I’m an Automedon.² You’ll see how I get you there!’ he said, not letting go of the reins when Levin asked him to let the coachman drive. ‘No, I must redeem my sins, and I feel wonderful on the box.’ And he drove on.

Levin was a bit afraid that he would wear out the horses, especially the chestnut on the left, whom he was unable to control; but he involuntarily yielded to his merriment, listened to the romances that Veslovsky, sitting on the box, sang along the way, or to his stories and his imitation of the proper English way of driving a four-in-hand; and after lunch, in the merriest spirits, they drove on to the Gvozdevo marsh.

X

Vasenka drove the horses at such a lively pace that they reached the marsh too early, while it was still hot.

Having arrived at the serious marsh, the main goal of the trip, Levin involuntarily thought about how to get rid of Vasenka and move about unhindered. Stepan Arkadyich obviously wished for the same thing, and Levin saw on his face the preoccupied expression that a true hunter always has before the start of a hunt and a certain good-natured slyness all his own.

‘How shall we proceed? I see it’s an excellent marsh, and there are hawks,’ said Stepan Arkadyich, pointing at two big birds circling over the sedge. ‘Where there are hawks, there must be game as well.’

‘So you see, gentlemen,’ said Levin, pulling up his boots and examining the percussion caps on his gun with a slightly glum expression. ‘You see that sedge?’ He pointed to a little black-green island showing dark against the huge, half-mowed wet meadow that stretched to the right side of the river. ‘The swamp begins there, right in front of us, where it’s greener. From there it goes to the right, where those horses are; it’s hummocky and there are great snipe; and then around the sedge to that alder grove over there and right up to the mill. See, where that creek is. That’s the best spot. I once shot seventeen snipe there. We’ll split up in two directions with the two dogs and meet there at the mill.’

‘Well, who goes right and who left?’ asked Stepan Arkadyich. ‘It’s wider to the right, the two of you go that way, and I’ll go left,’ he said as if casually.

‘Excellent! We’ll outshoot him. Well, let’s go, let’s go!’ Vasenka picked up.

Levin could not but consent, and they went their separate ways.

As soon as they entered the marsh, both dogs began searching together and drew towards a rusty spot. Levin knew this searching of Laska‘s, cautious and vague; he also knew the spot and was expecting a wisp of snipe.

‘Walk beside me, Veslovsky, beside me!’ he said in a muted voice to his comrade, who was splashing behind him through the water, and the direction of whose gun, after the accidental shot by the Kolpeno marsh, involuntarily interested him.

‘No, I don’t want to hamper you, don’t think about me.’